Laura Rowland - The Fire Kimono

“There were compensations.” She laid her hand against his cheek and smiled. Her eyes brimmed with love. “I had you.”

Sano resisted her affection. He was even more upset by the truth about his origins. He was as much a result of his mother’s illicit affair as if he’d been the fruit of it. If not for her illegitimate, miscarried child, she would never have married his father, and Sano would never have been born. He owed his existence to the affair-and to the crime that had divided her from the man she’d loved. And he began to see what else he owed to his mother the murderess.

He’d always wondered where he’d gotten his inclination to put himself in jeopardy for the sake of a cause, his belief that justice was all-important, even if it required actions that society disapproved of or the law forbade. His nature didn’t come from his father, who’d adhered strictly to Bushido’s code of conformity to social mores and discouraged individual initiative in his son. Sano had long ago decided that his rogue tendencies were entirely his own creation. But now, as his mother dropped her hand from his face and he looked into her eyes, he saw their source.

She said, “When you were a boy, I watched you growing into the same sort of person I was when I was young. I feared you would get in trouble and ruin your life the way I did mine. Well, I was wrong.” She beamed at Sano. “My son the chamberlain!” Her smile turned rueful. “But I was right, too.”

Sano couldn’t quite smile at the memory of the times he’d stubbornly pursued murderers and delivered them to justice, risking his position and his life to uphold his personal definition of honor.

“Perhaps I’m lucky that you take after me,” his mother said. “Because you can understand why I had to kill Tadatoshi and why I convinced Doi and Egen to help me.”

To his credit and discredit, Sano did. Tadatoshi the arsonist had been the greatest criminal of all time, his death toll thousands of times greater than any killer Sano had ever faced. “Yes,” Sano admitted. “If I’d been in your position, I would have done the same as you did. I’d have taken the law into my own hands, the consequences be damned.”

More revelations astounded Sano. Was his mother’s partnership with Doi and Egen not a precedent for Sano’s partnership with Reiko and their missions into shady territory outside the law? Many people wondered why Sano put up with a wife as strong-willed and venturesome as Reiko; he’d often wondered himself. Now he saw that his acceptance of her had to do with more than love.

He must have unconsciously perceived his mother’s true nature, and she was his standard for what he wanted in a mate. His affinity for an unconventional woman had been bred in the womb. There was no part of his life that his mother and her actions hadn’t influenced.

But it didn’t matter that he understood what she’d done. His wasn’t the opinion that counted.

“Can you forgive me?” she asked anxiously.

Sano couldn’t find in himself the capacity to forgive. Emotion choked him; he didn’t trust himself to speak. And his finally learning the story didn’t help his mother. This was his last day to exonerate her, and he couldn’t. He’d always believed the truth would save the innocent, but this time it would damn the guilty.

He cleared his throat and said, “It’s not my forgiveness you need. The shogun will be expecting the final results of my investigation.” So would his enemies, who would pressure the shogun to condemn Sano and his mother. “I don’t know what to say to him.” If the shogun were to hear that she’d killed Tadatoshi because he was an arsonist and a mass murderer, he would think she was trying to justify her crime by slandering his poor dead cousin. “I can hardly tell him your story.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” a voice said behind them. “I, ahh, heard the whole thing.”

Sano and his mother started, turned, and saw the shogun in the doorway. “Your Excellency,” Sano exclaimed, unable to hide his horror that the shogun had come for another visit at the worst possible time. “What a pleasure to see you. I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Obviously not,” the shogun said tartly, “or you and your mother wouldn’t have been having such a, ahh, fascinating conversation.”

“Please come in and sit down,” Sano said. “Have you eaten yet? May I offer you some refreshments?”

Ignoring Sano’s attempt to divert him, the shogun crept into the room. His expression wavered between confusion, shock, and outrage. “She said my cousin set the fire in Koishikawa,” he said, pointing at Sano’s mother. “Is it true?”

She looked from him to Sano, stunned wordless. Sano hurried to reply, “That’s not what she said. You misheard. Now how may I be of service?”

The shogun waved Sano away. “Your mother shall answer my question. Perhaps she is the one person in this entire country who will tell me the straight facts instead of talking in circles.” He turned to her. “Did you really say that my cousin set that fire?”

This time Sano’s mother showed no fear, didn’t cringe. “Yes,” she said with quiet conviction. “I saw him with my own eyes-exactly as you heard me tell my son.”

Sano suppressed a groan. That she’d accused a member of the Tokugawa clan of a capital crime! That she’d committed this act of treason to the shogun’s face! She seemed intent on using the truth to seal her doom.

“You saw him set the fire that burned the castle?” The shogun’s voice rose shrill and loud with appalled incredulity.

“Mother,” Sano said, “let me handle this.”

“Quiet!” the shogun ordered.

“Yes,” Sano’s mother said.

Sano despaired of trying to rescue her from herself. The shogun would call his guards to arrest her, Sano, and their whole family. Sano drew a breath to call his own guards. He braced himself for a fight.

The shogun sank to his knees. His assertiveness crumbled; his complexion turned pale, sickly. Sano was so disconcerted by his lord’s sudden change of mood that he exhaled and hesitated.

“I was in the castle during the Great Fire,” the shogun said in a tremulous, broken voice. “With my mother. We thought we would be safe, until the second day, when the fire started in Koishikawa. It came blazing up the hill.” He shrank into himself; his voice grew thinner and higher as he reverted to the scared little boy he’d been during the disaster.

“The wind blew the fire to the castle. We were in the middle of a sea of flames. They leaped the walls and burned the corridors on top. Then they were raging inside the castle. We hurried to the West Quarter, which was farthest away from the fire. We hid there while the rest of the castle burned.”

His gaze was clouded by the memory of that awful day, by his unforgotten terror. “If our soldiers hadn’t managed to put out the fire before it could reach the West Quarter, my mother and I would have perished.” Outrage cleared his eyes. “The fire that Tadatoshi set virtually destroyed my castle.” Thumping his palm against his chest, the shogun said, “He almost killed me!”

Astonishment struck Sano. The shogun had accepted his mother’s story as the truth. And he cared only about the part of the story that directly concerned himself. Recovering from his first shock, Sano realized that the shogun was behaving completely in character.

“Tadatoshi killed thousands of people,” Sano’s mother said.

The shogun made an impatient, dismissive gesture. “Because of him, I almost died! Even though I didn’t, I was frightened out of my wits!”

Sano’s mother frowned at his self-centeredness. Her lips parted, but Sano silenced her with a glance before she could rebuke the shogun as she had Sano when he’d behaved callously toward other people during his childhood. He floated a question as cautiously as if releasing a butterfly to test the wind.